AMD marketing and sales chief Henri Richard to step down

AMD's Henri Richard appears set to resign from his position as executive vice president and chief sales and marketing officer. According to a report by CNET, Richards resignation takes effect on September 8, ahead of the company's biggest product launch of the year, its four-core Opteron (Barcelona) chip.

AMD has had a rough year, its decision to pursue a native quad-core strategy over the much quicker to market packaged quad-core design that Intel has adopted, has forced the chip maker to lower its prices to compete with Intels products. On July 19, AMD announced a net loss of US$600 million for its second quarter, following a loss of $611 million for the first quarter and $574 million for the fourth quarter of 2006.

Richard's is known for making bold statements and for its confrontational style, which includes suing its rival Intel for abuse of monopoly power. Richard's departure follows the exit of David Orton, the former chief executive of ATI who worked as an executive vice president at AMD for just nine months after the companies merged.

So far, there are no details on who would be replacing Richards or his reasons for leaving AMD. The company is expected to formally announce Richard's resignation later today.